Clarence Edward Pitts
Ocean City man accepted for military service, 1942 · active 1942
Named in the Worcester Democrat of 26 June 1942 in Local Board No. 1's list of twelve men accepted into service, under 'Ocean City' and under the heading 'Colored'. He is the first Black resident of Ocean City the campaign has found named in a contemporary record of the Second World War. Nothing further about him — unit, service, survival, family — has been traced.
In the record (1)
1942 · 1942-06-26
Clarence Edward Pitts of Ocean City was accepted into the armed forces in June 1942 — the first Black resident of the town the campaign has found named in a contemporary wartime record.
Local Board No. 1 of the Selective Service System reported twelve men accepted into service, and the county paper printed the list town by town and, as it always did, race by race. 'Ocean City, white: Charles Russell Cooper, Edward William Quillen, Paul T. Scott Workman. Colored: Clarence Edward Pitts.' One line, four words of category, a name. The town's own minute book had not named a Black resident since 1939 and would not name one in 1942 except as the object of a decision to stop colored excursions; the federal draft board named this man in the ordinary course of its business, and the paper printed it. The 1940 census enumerated a Pitts household inside the corporate limits of Ocean City — William Pitts, 64, with two lodgers, Agnes Hill, 65, and William Campbell, 54, born in Georgia, all entered 'Neg'. Whether Clarence Edward Pitts belonged to it is not established. In November the same board's list carried, under Colored, Raymond Calvin Pitts of Berlin.
Source · checked 2026-08-11